


Coping Mechanisms

by hellpenguin



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: sga_flashfic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-25
Updated: 2007-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellpenguin/pseuds/hellpenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John, Ronon, Elizabeth, Rodney, and Teyla all deal with leaving Atlantis in different ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coping Mechanisms

John misses Atlantis like a fish misses water.

He thinks he knows how Rodney felt, trapped beneath a million miles of dark, oppressive ocean, air running out, only your mind to keep you company.

He is Claustrophobic, suddenly, in this once-familiar world where nothing makes sense, not anymore.

There are people here, people who get in your space and push against you on your way down the sidewalk, people who shout at you to turn in papers and laugh at you when you walk into doors.

He finds himself going to the grocery store often, just for the way the doors open instantly. He walks through them, back and forth, in and out, before he gets so many strange looks he has to go home.

Home.

Is not here.  
************************  
  
2)

Ronon is good at breaking things.

His first day on Earth, and he sits in the hotel room John's people have set up for him. He can't stand it. Everything is clean, tucked in nicely, immaculate. He's surrounded by lies. He wants to rage, to tear the curtains from the window, rip the carpet from the floor.

He keeps seeing Sateda. Like flutterings of a dream. In the corner of his eyes.

Sateda was pretty, like this world. Sateda died.

John tells him he is not allowed to rip, smash, tear, or destroy anything.

He confines himself to the too-clean bathroom, breaking miniature bars of soap in half, tearing the toilet paper off the roll.

They tell him he can start a new life here, free from the Wraith. He can get a Job. He can get a House. He can jog every morning before the city wakes up, drink Starbucks. Maybe someday, he can have a Family.

Ronon is good at breaking things, but he is not good picking up the pieces.  
*********************  
  
3)

The first thing Elizabeth does is go to the beach. She stands on the pier, feels the wind and salt in her face, closes her eyes, and wishes. She'll be out there hours, until her face is numb.

She won't even realize she's crying until she can taste her tears, salt-sharp and so, so familiar, like Atlantis behind her eyes.

And then she has to turn away, her back to the ocean, and it's like leaving all over again.  
********************  
  
4)

Rodney closes his apartment door behind him.

It's quiet, like he remembers. It's just as messy. It's just the way he left it. Empty.

It's bigger than his room on Atlantis is. Was.

Here, the doors don't open automatically. The lights don't come on when he walks in, and he panics, did the main power grid malfunction again? Before he remembers that this is not Atlantis.

This is not Atlantis and will never come close.  
  
********************  
  
5)

Teyla dreams.

She eats ice cream and watches Oprah and late at night, falls asleep in the lavender-scented bath and dreams of Atlantis.

She swims through blue-green passageways and rockets through dark skies, and on her back is a world of promise.

She wakes up to a dark hotel room full of memories and flashes from the television, commercials on the walls. They will not let her light candles here. The people on the street give her strange looks, make comments about girls in leather skirts, leering.

Often, someone on the street brushes past her and she reaches for her sticks, always in her waistband. But they are gone, confiscated. She cannot have weapons without a permit here.

So she eats Chinese takeout and hordes away chopsticks. She has drawers full. They are not her sticks, but they will do.

Teyla has always been the sort of person to take what she was given and make the best of it.

It is hard to do so, on Earth. But she is trying.

Every day, she has to try harder.


End file.
